The merger’s goal is to save taxpayers $1.6 million in the first year of a united Princeton and eventually more than $3 million a year.

Princeton Township had surrounded the borough like a doughnut, and Ivy League Princeton University straddled the town line. The successful unification effort followed three prior attempts to consolidate – in 1953, 1979 and 1996 – that fell flat.

New Jersey now has 565 towns, many of them small. The last time towns had merged was in 1997, when Warren County’s Hardwick absorbed Pohaquarry, population seven.

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